When Building a Nontraditional Family, No Regrets Is the Work

There’s a question Matt and I keep circling back to lately: What can we do that, no matter what happens in our journey to build a nontraditional family, we won’t regret doing?

It sounds mature, almost zen. Oh, but it did not start that way.

It started as survival.

We Were Trying to Control an Uncontrollable Adoption Process

When we tried building a nontraditional family through adoption, we became obsessed with doing it “right.”

• We filled out the adoption forms perfectly.

• We rehearsed phone calls.

• We reread texts from birth mothers looking for tone shifts.

• We analyzed timelines like they were financial models.

We were desperately trying to control this process. And when we were matched — when a birth mother chose us — it felt like relief more than joy. Relief that the waiting was over. Relief that all the strategizing had worked.

We let ourselves picture the nursery. We calculated due dates. We imagined telling our parents.

And then the phone calls came. Plans changed. Hearts changed. Circumstances shifted. Each time, it felt like the ground disappeared.

Not just because of the loss of the adoption disruption — but because we realized how little control we actually had.

The Adoption Disruption Spiral of “Should We Have…”

After every adoption disruption, our brains did the same thing:

• Should we have asked more questions?

• Should we have waited?

• Should we have chosen differently?

Regret feels like responsibility. Like if you can find the mistake, you can prevent the next heartbreak.

But most of the time, there wasn’t a mistake. There was just uncertainty. And two hopeful dads trying to build a nontraditional family inside systems that were never designed for us.

Everything in our Adoption Journey Became About “One Day”

For a while, everything in our life was future-tense, based on an adoption that hadn’t happened yet. For example:

• “We’ll travel now because one day we’ll have kids.”

• “We shouldn’t spend that money now because one day we’ll have kids.”

• “We can tolerate this job now because one day we’ll have kids.”

Everything we did on our adoption journey was all about: we’re going to have kids one day.

It’s amazing how easily your present can become collateral damage for a future that hasn’t arrived yet.

We were living in the waiting room.

The Shift in Our Thinking about Becoming Two Dads

The shift in our thinking about becoming two dads didn’t happen overnight. It came after enough reproductive grief and infertility depression that we got tired.

• Tired of rearranging our lives around hypotheticals.

• Tired of holding our breath.

• Tired of measuring our worth against timelines we couldn’t control.
  

And somewhere in that exhaustion, we asked: What if we built a life we loved either way?

Not as a consolation prize to adopting a child. Not as “Plan B.” But as the actual point.

We started traveling again without attaching it to “before baby.” We invested in our marriage. We let ourselves enjoy hosting our exchange student without turning him into a symbol of what we were missing.

We remembered we are more than this one goal of building a family in one specific way.

No Regrets about Adoption Disruption Doesn’t Mean No Grief

We both still want to be dads. We still feel it when another transfer fails. We still feel it when friends post first birthdays. We still feel it in quiet moments we don’t talk about publicly.

Having “no regrets” about adoption disruption isn’t toxic positivity. It’s this:

Did we make the best decision we could with the information we had?

If yes — then we don’t get to punish ourselves for the outcome. Every lesson has its purpose. Even the ones that hurt.

What We’re Learning about Building a Nontraditional Family

When trying to build a nontraditional family, we cannot control the adoption process or whether parenthood arrives. We can control:

• How we treat each other.

• How we steward our money.

• How we care for our mental health and deal with reproductive grief.

• How we build community.

• How we live right now.
  

Because if having childrenworks out — we want to arrive as two dads that are whole.

And if it doesn’t — we still want to have a life we are proud of. That’s the work.

Not “positive thinking.”Not pretending it doesn’t hurt.

Just choosing, again and again, to live in a way we won’t regret — no matter the ending.